In the time of 1800 there was nearly no flood protection at the Upper Rhine. The first systematic flood protection was established by the correction of the Rhine in the 19 th century, the construction of continuous dike systems, the first and the second Jura Water Correction in Switzerland and systematic corrections of the tributaries of the Rhine in Baden- Württemberg. Due to the development of the Upper Rhine with the construction of ten barrages of hydropower plants until 1977 the flood protection was seriously reduced below the power plants The flood protection, as it existed before power plant construction is planned to be re-established by building of retention basins, of which some are already are active. The completion of all the necessary flood control measures will still take many years.
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In a research project dealing with operational runoff and flood forecasting in headwater catchments (OPAQUE), a recently developed, extended soil-moisture-dependent infiltration model was tested in the physically based hydrological water-balance model LARSIM with four catchments in southern Germany. The extended infiltration model considers Horton's runoff and is well suitable to simulate macropore-runoff in humid and forested areas. It was tested whether the more complex infiltration approach allows better representations of extreme flood events in headwater catchment compared with results based on a simple soil-saturation-dependent infiltration model. The extended infiltration model leads in most cases to improved representations in case of floods produced by heavy convective rain. The improvement is marginal when floods are caused by advective rain. A sensitivity analysis was made with respect to important parameters of the extended infiltration approach. Further investigation of the extended approach for different areas is recommended.
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